


Forget the Bermuda Triangle…

by StopIWantToTalkAboutCheese



Series: MISSING: Tales From the Life of a Private Investigator [4]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Conspiracy Theories, M/M, POV Outsider, luka the conspiracy theorist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:01:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26802568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StopIWantToTalkAboutCheese/pseuds/StopIWantToTalkAboutCheese
Summary: Superstitious people would tell you that the Bermuda Triangle is one of the most mysterious places in the world. They would tell you that it was a vacuum, designed to lure people in and trap them for eternity.When Luka was a younger man, he scoffed at these people. Now, he still scoffed at them, but for an entirely different reason.The Bermuda Triangle might be more popular, but it hadnothingon the vacuums that were Long Island, New York and the Bay Area, California.
Series: MISSING: Tales From the Life of a Private Investigator [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1911502
Comments: 14
Kudos: 91





	Forget the Bermuda Triangle…

**Author's Note:**

> sorry this took a while! my computer broke and school is back in session so ive been busy recently. I promise i won't abandon this thing without giving y'all a heads up.  
> Anyway, enjoy!  
> :)

Superstitious people would tell you that the Bermuda Triangle is one of the most mysterious places in the world. They would tell you that it was a vacuum, designed to lure people in and trap them for eternity. 

When Luka was a younger man, he scoffed at these people. Now, he still scoffed at them, but for an entirely different reason. 

The Bermuda Triangle might be more popular, but it had _nothing_ on the vacuums that were Long Island, New York and the Bay Area, California. 

Those. Places. Drove. Him. Insane.

 _Every single time,_ Luka would be on the heels of some kid or another, sometimes with the entirety of Manhattan’s police force at his back, and _every single time_ , the second they got to Long Island, they would vanish.

Every time, he would think he was going to get them this time, he was going to find the kid and return them to their parent, and every time he was thwarted. 

At first glance, there was no rhyme or reason to it. The kids were all different ages, genders, sexualities, races… but when you looked closer, a pattern emerged. 

Most of these kids had at least three things in common. One, they vanished near Long Island or Berkely, two, the kids were usually known troublemakers, and three, they never had more than one biological parent in their lives. Never.

No matter what, every single kid who vanished had either a single parent, a parent who had remarried, or no parents at all. Without fail, there was always– _always_ – at least one parent completely out of the picture. There was a variation on whether it was the mother or the father, but still, that was the one constant.

Jason and Thalia Grace. Annabeth Chase. Clarrise LaRue. Percy Jackson. Reyna and Hylla Ramírez-Arellano. Leo Valdez, Piper McLean, Silena Beauregard, Frank Zhang, and so many more. Some, Luka had been lucky enough to meet. Or unlucky, depending on how you looked at it. But they always seemed to vanish the moment he tried to get closer.

Take Luke Castellan, for example. He was spotted all over the country for five years before completely vanishing. The last person to see him alive was a Long Island woman who claimed he was with three other kids and being chased by a pack of wolves. She ran inside to call the police, but by the time they arrived, Castellan and the kids were gone, and there was no trace of a pack of wolves anywhere to be found.

Or Annabeth Chase, who ran away at seven, was briefly spotted on Long Island when she was about twelve, and apparently never went to middle or high school but is currently at college in northern California.

Or Percy Jackson, who seemed to be everywhere Luka looked. He was on a bus in New Jersey which blew up. He was on the St. Louis Arch, which blew up. He was in Mount St. Helens, which blew up. And every single time Luka tried to figure the kid out, or get close to him– every single time, Percy Jackson vanished. 

Or how about Piper McLean, daughter of Hollywood star Tristan McLean? To be fair, _she_ had gone missing in Arizona, but both she and her briefly-kidnapped father had been found at Mount Tamalpais in California– _way_ too close to the Bay Area to be a coincidence.

Plus, there was Hylla and Reyna Ramírez-Arellano. Leo Valdez. Even some kid named Frank Zhang, who was apparently an illegal immigrant from Canada but had yet to be found.  


And that was only the tip of the iceberg. 

It was a conspiracy, Luka was sure of it. In fact, the farther he went back in his case files, the more and more people he realized had vanished at these points. All throughout history– or at least since the Revolutionary War. For some reason, the numbers seemed to significantly decrease after World War II, but still, thousands of kids were going missing in those areas. Thousands!

Seriously. It had to be a kidnapping ring, or… or something. One that spanned generations. And was remarkably consistent with the kinds of kids who they abducted. It was insane, but what other explanation was there? It couldn’t be a coincidence.

Plus, when Luka did some more digging, he realized it wasn’t just random kids. It was famous people, too– people Luka had grown up learning about. Amelia Earhart, George Washington, Harriet Tubman, _and_ Harry Houdini had all gone missing for a week or longer while on Long Island at some point in their lives, and when they returned, they all refused to disclose where they had been. Even Washington! Mr. ‘I must not tell a lie!’ 

It was insane, that’s what it was. Insane!

But there was a pattern, and Luka was going to figure it out, goddamnit. 

When he had tried to show Anthony, his boyfriend had been absolutely baffled, but not for the reasons Luka expected. He had taken everything in with a look of polite confusion, and then seemed to get stuck on one infuriatingly odd point.

“How about Brooklyn?” he kept asking. “Is there anything weird about Brooklyn? Are you sure?”

“ _No,_ ” Luka said, beginning to get frustrated. “Babe, I am absolutely sure. There’s nothing weird about Brooklyn other than the fact that it’s Brooklyn. I’m talking about Long Island. And the Bay Area– like, you know, San Francisco-ish. They’re like black holes! Kids go in, and they don’t come out. I'm telling you, it's connected somehow!”

“Weird,” Anthony had said. “I’ll check it out.”

“What? How? You work in insurance, what do you mean _you’ll check it out?_ ”

Anthony had shrugged. “The Internet? Hey, did I tell you I visited my dad yesterday?”

“No, how is he?”

They talked about Anthony’s father’s health for a little while, but Luka couldn’t get the mystery out of his head.

It was a conspiracy, right? It was crazy. It was weird. It was completely and totally uncanny.

Or maybe… 

Maybe these areas were just bad luck. Maybe that was all there was to it. 

But it was just so _weird_.

Frightened, runaway children, all flocking to the Bay Area or Long Island and never resurfacing again. He should write an op-ed or something on it. Get the word out. 

_And be ridiculed about it for the rest of my life?_ he thought.

No. Best to just leave the whole thing alone. Something about all of this made him want to hide under his desk and rock back and forth until it all went away.

Letting out a sigh, he reached for another cup of coffee and let the sound of Anthony’s voice wash over him. He would deal with this conspiracy. Probably. Maybe.

Eventually.

**Author's Note:**

> Tell me what you think?
> 
> Next up: the McLeans :)


End file.
